Current business processes for Point of Sale (POS) generate a “hard-copy receipt” or “electronic receipt” for the customer for every purchase. This POS process also generates receipts for the customers, merchants, and banks such as credit card companies when the purchase is made with a credit card. For example, a customer may purchase a product with a credit card from a merchant at the merchant's store or electronically via the merchant's web site. The merchant will process the credit card payment, electronically communicating with the credit card company to verify that the credit card company is willing to pay the amount of currency described by the merchant for the transaction. Once the transaction is authorized, an approval code is provided to the merchant and the merchant completes the transaction by providing the customer with a receipt that includes the product and some description to identify the form of payment and the credit card utilized for payment.
In addition to providing a purchaser with the product and a receipt for a product, the corresponding manufacturer and merchant try to provide supplementary and/or complementary product information such as warranties, warranty renewals, rebates, return policies, instruction manuals, accessories, locations of repair centers, and the like. Moreover, the purchaser also wants to receive much of this product information so it can be retained and used at the purchaser's convenience.
When the transaction transpires at the merchant's physical storefront, the merchant typically provides a “hardcopy” receipt for the transaction, possibly tossing advertisements and brochures describing the merchant's return policy, rebate policy, and warranty policy. Similarly, when the transaction is completed via the merchant's on-line store, the merchant automatically generates an email receipt that may include text that describes warranties, return policies, and provides a uniform resource locator (URL) link to the on-line store. By supplying the information to the purchaser at the time of the purchase, the merchant can provide the purchaser with the most up to date information at the time of the purchase.
The manufacture, on the other hand, must provide the product information such as product manuals, rebates, repair center locations, and possibly product accessory catalogs by inserting the hardcopies in the packaging for the product before the product is even shipped to the merchant, which could be months or years before the purchaser buys the product from the merchant. Further, since the manufacturer deals with large quantities of the same product, information like product manuals must be ordered in advance of packaging the product. In some cases, especially when considering products like software applications, the product may be updated or revised between the time that the product manual is printed and when the product is packaged. Thus, manufacturers may print inserts or fliers just before packaging the product to update information in the full product manuals. Unfortunately, the information such as manuals, rebates, and repair center locations, which are subject to change may be outdated to some extent when the purchaser needs to use them.
One solution for manufacturers is to include a URL in or on the packaging that directs the customer to a web site that has the latest version of, e.g., the product manual for use or download. With regard to many software products, in fact, the manufacturers may just provide a short, “getting started” manual to help the purchaser install the software and include within the software, links to instruction manuals, technical assistance, or the like.
Banks such as credit card companies may offer transaction rejection policies for the purchaser for transactions in which the bank was utilized for payment, allowing the purchaser to back out of transactions that were fraudulent, not authorized by the card holder, or that resulted in products that were defective or otherwise not fit for use. These policies may be included in the original agreement executed by the purchaser or in an updated agreement mailed out to the purchaser at a later date.
Further, many banks form alliances with merchants and/or manufacturers that allow the banks to offer discounts for purchases of related products such as accessories. As a result, banks tend to include product information to the purchaser in billing statements. Some information included in the billing statements is triggered upon recognition by banking software of the nature of the product or merchant that sold the product to the purchaser. For example, the purchaser may buy an item from The Sharper Image™ and the bank may be able to offer discounts on products available to the purchaser from The Sharper Image™. Thus, the bank prints coupons or advertisements related to the transaction in the billing statement.
Being bombarded with the product information from the merchants, manufacturers, and banks, in different formats and, at least with regard to the information from the bank, at different times, the purchaser must be very organized, filing the information in a manner that it will be accessible when needed. In many situations, the purchaser may lose track of the information or may even forget about certain policies received from the store, the bank, and/or the manufacturer at the time the policies are needed. For instance, the purchaser may purchase a television, receive an in-store warranty for a year and a manufacturer's warranty for three years. The manufacturer's warranty may be extendable within a few months of expiration and the purchaser, considering that a great offer, factor that extendable warranty in as a basis for purchasing the particular manufacturer's television. However, three years later, the purchaser may forget about the extendable warranty and forget to file the paperwork to extend the warranty since the television seems to be working great. A year later, after it's too late for the purchaser to extend the warranty, a part, previously under warranty, may fail, costing the purchaser significantly more than the price of extending the warranty.